PEAK EPIC Nutrition Guide

This guide is designed to help you optimise your nutrition during the PEAK EPIC giving you an insight into why, what and when to take sports nutrition. No marketing nonsense, just pure independent advice on what we have found works.

Pre Event

Pre Event – In depth look

Anything in the couple of days prior to an event can be classed as pre-event nutrition. Whilst ensuring you don’t under eat or drink might seem obvious, it is also important to avoid the temptation to over eat or over drink which will also have a negative effect on performance. The best way is to try and keep things as familiar as possible, just optimise it. Whilst this is not always easy when travelling, keeping a similar routine to what you would normally eat during the days prior to the big ride is the best way to ensure your body is working at its best come the event day.

On the day prior to the PEAK EPIC, unless it’s exceptionally hot, try not to drink more than 2 litres (excluding what you might drink on a pre-event ride). Over drinking will lead to excess weight gain and the flushing out of key electrolytes and nutrients. Drink to thirst and recognise if you start to panic drink and put the water bottle down!

I would also advise not to drink any energy drinks in the days prior, or the morning of the PEAK EPIC, but instead to fortify water with key electrolytes and trace metals, key to performance.

Products like: CNP Hydro tabs/ High 5 Zero/ Nuun/ Nectar Hydro tabs/ OTE Hydro tabs/ SiS Hydro/ ZipVit ZV0

In fact, my advice is that energy drinks should only be consumed within 1 hour of the event. This is because they have a similar effect on blood sugar levels as drinking sugar rich squash/pop which will lead to nasty spikes in blood sugar levels.

The optimal time to eat before the start of the PEAK EPIC is 3:30-4:30am which is a little early for most of us. Do try, however hard it is, to get up around 5-6am and a eat good breakfast, porridge for example, plus some protein e.g scrambled eggs or protein shake. I would recommend CNP Pro Peptide which consists of mixed sourced protein. The reason to eat so early is because exercise dramatically affects the function of your digestive system, so you want to give your body sufficient time to fully digest your breakfast before you start.

Getting up at 5am may make you all want a nice strong coffee to get you going, however if this is not something you routinely do, treat caffeine with a degree of caution. Caffeine is a power performance enhancing stimulant, which can increase performance but only when used in the right way. The most important thing to remember, if taken pre event, is that you will need to continue to top up your caffeine levels throughout the event every hour, otherwise you may experience a sudden dip/drop in energy levels.

For some of us, continually consuming caffeine throughout the event may lead to stomach cramps. This is why it is imperative to NEVER try ANYTHING NEW at the PEAK EPIC. Keep it all familiar.

In the final hour before the start of the PEAK EPIC you just want to provide your body with small amounts of easily digested carbohydrate. You don’t want to be stuffing your face! Don’t panic eat! The real fuelling should have happened at breakfast and the days prior. A banana 1hr and a Gel/Energy Chew 15/20 mins before is ideal.

At this point I would recommend eating Gels or Energy Chews over Bars because often we all get a little anxious/nervous/excited before the start which compromises digestion further. Gels and Energy Chews are easier to digest so are less likely to upset your stomach. However energy bars are perfectly fine if either that is what you are used to or you don’t suffer stomach issues.

During Event

During Event – In depth look

Hydration

Hydration is all about being optimally hydrated. This isn’t drinking as much as possible; in fact for some of us it can mean staying slightly dehydrated for the whole event. Read more here (Endurance Fuel might not exist anymore but the blog still has lots of good relevant information).

To be optimally hydrated means only drinking enough to prevent dehydration affecting performance – drinking more is NOT beneficial. There have been more sport related deaths from over drinking than dehydration!

The best way to stay optimally hydrated is to drink to thirst, our body’s own personal hydration gauge. What to drink? This is still very much debated. Water + electrolytes, energy drink + electrolytes or watered down energy drink + electrolytes.

The current most up to date strategies (2013) suggest we should separate hydration from fuelling. It is something that the majority of the professional cycling teams implement. This is because hydration and fuelling are dependent on different factors. Hydration is affected by climatic conditions, which means that hydration requirements vary independently of energy requirements

e.g. On a hot humid day you will be more thirsty than on a cold winter day so will need to drink more liquid. However, if the exercise length and intensity is the same, your carbohydrate requirements will remain constant regardless of weather conditions.

I therefore don’t recommend relying solely on energy drink for both energy and hydration as either hydration or fuelling will be compromised.

Should we forget using energy drinks then? Not necessarily as there is quite a lot of science showing that water + carbohydrate increases the absorption rate of water. So there could be hydration benefit from consuming carbohydrate with water. However the concentration of carbohydrate doesn’t need to be very high. The majority of the professional cycling peloton use very diluted energy drink fortified with electrolytes.

Reducing the amount of carbohydrate you drink can also be the saviour to any of us that suffer with stomach cramps (I personally found this). Don’t think just because the manufacturers say you should drink a drink at this concentration it will work for you! Constantly bombarding your stomach with drink rich in carbohydrate can compromise an already compromised digestive system. For some of us it isn’t an issue, however for us unlucky few it is probably worth switching to water + electrolytes like High5 Zero, ZipVit ZV0… etc.

What drinks are available at the Beat the Bonk feed-stations?

• Electrolytes – High 5 Zero

• Energy Drink – High5 EnergySource

• Water – Peak District’s finest tap water!

• Squash

Try out High5 EnergySource before your event to make sure it agrees with you. 500ml of High5 EnergySource will provide 45g of 2:1 Carbohydrate.

Fuelling

Fuelling for the PEAK EPIC, like any endurance event, is about how fuel efficient you are. Just like a car, those of us that are fuel efficient get more MPG or in this case miles per gram. An efficient endurance athlete is able to ride and ride on what appears to be very little food or energy drink. Why is this? This is because they are efficient at burning two fuels; keeping the car analogy going they are a hybrid, able to utilise two independent energy stores. These two stores are fat and glycogen (carbohydrate energy store) and like a hybrid’s electric engine the fat store is best for low speeds/intensity. It is a massive store relative to glycogen, even in the skinniest person, which means if you’re burning fat you can just keep going at this lower intensity for a long time. Glycogen on the other hand, is the petrol engine, highly powerful and when burning allows us to reach greater intensities and thus speed. However it is a small store and is burnt up fast (within 2hrs).

The perfect endurance athlete is efficient at burning fat as fuel, reducing their rate of glycogen depletion allowing them to continue exercising at the same intensity for longer.

Sadly, however, most of us aren’t very efficient at burning fat as fuel and are heavily dependent on glycogen to fuel our endurance. By consuming sports nutrition products, rich in easily digested carbohydrate, we can help our bodies out by supplementing the carbohydrate energy available in glycogen with that found in the products.

However, for any event longer than 4 hours, like the PEAK EPIC, your body will need to utilise its fat stores to keep going as your body’s demand on carbohydrate exceeds what you can replace from food. There are a number of ways of improving your body’s ability to burn fat: low fuel exercise and diet being the major ones.

How much to consume? This is very much individual, whilst manufacturers would love to dictate exactly how much you need to consume, only you really know this by practice and learning how to eat on the go. A good starting point though is to roughly consume between 50-90g carbohydrate an hour, which equates to 1-3 gels, 1-2 bars or 2/3 servings of energy chews (but remember those drinking energy drink will require less gels, bars and chews). The carbohydrate should ideally be of mixed sourced i.e. fructose, sucrose and maltodextrin as it allows the body to assimilate more carbohydrate per hour.

If you are new to sportives you will not be able to consume as much carbohydrate an hour as someone used to eating on the go. Any exercise compromises the digestive system but our body can adjust over time. This is why it’s imperative to get used to eating on the go whilst training so you can ‘train’ your gut.

What to eat? Don’t just stick to one thing. Sportives last a long time and only eating gels can become a little tedious, maybe even sickly. A mixture of ‘REAL’ food and sports nutrition products often works best.

Learn from the pro’s!

A professional cyclist during a stage of the Tour de France doesn’t just eat sports nutrition products. You’ll often see them eating cakes, brioches, sandwiches, rice ‘cakes’ and bananas. These are all ideal for anyone taking part in sportives.

‘REAL’ food however isn’t always as easy to digest, so pick your point to consume them i.e. not at the foot of a climb!

Keep it varied! Even if a tropical flavoured gel is your favourite, don’t only have tropical flavoured gels. When you start to get tired, motivation is dropping and you have still got 1-2 hours to go, the taste of a different flavoured gel or the change in texture of an energy bar can have a significant impact on the mind. Cycling can be repetitive and very much a mind battle, your energy fuel needn’t be!

What energy bars and gels are available at the Beat the Bonk feed-stations?

• High5 IsoGel

• High5 EnergyBars

• SIS Gels

• SIS GO Bar Mini

• OTE Energy Gel

• MuleBars

• Bananas

• Variety of biscuits, cheese sandwiches and other ‘REAL’ food.

As mentioned above, try before the event, so if you have never eaten any of the above bars and gels buy a few to try in weeks before the event. Beat the Bonk offer the option of buying individual bars and gels, allowing you to buy a mixture of flavours for you to try.

Post Event

Post Event – In depth look

So it’s over, you’ve completed the PEAK EPIC (well hopefully)! Once it’s over all you will want to do is relax, sit down, chill out. Except there is one last and arguably the most important nutrition stage left – Recovery.

After potentially 10 hours in the saddle, your body is going to be in pieces, broken down mentally and physically. In order for your body to recover quickly it needs help, so don’t switch off mentally yet.

There are 2 key windows:

• Less than 20mins

• 2 hours post event

20 minute window

In the minutes after finishing exercise your body can replenish glycogen faster than at any other time. So it is a key time to consume a high carbohydrate drink/food that will begin to replenish those depleted stores. The carbohydrates need to be high glycemic index (GI), possibly one of the only times where High GI is best. This is because it is quickly assimilated and transported to muscles and the liver to replete glycogen stores. Consuming carbohydrate:protein mix of between 3:1 – 4:1 ratio during this 20 min window can also increase the rate of glycogen repletion over pure carbohydrate. The presence of protein can also increase water absorption leading to faster rehydration plus it provides the key amino acids for muscle repair. However it is worth understanding that muscle repair doesn’t begin immediately after exercise so consuming more protein at this stage isn’t advantageous. This is best done by consuming a recovery drink within 20 mins of finishing.

2 hours post event

After 20 minutes that optimum window closes, however our metabolism is still elevated allowing us to consume and digest food quicker than we would normally do so. Therefore you should try and eat a large starchy meal with some quality protein about 2 hours after finishing. This will continue the glycogen replacement, provide key amino acids for muscle repair and provide nutrients, fats and antioxidants to further aid recovery. It is worth noting that this isn’t the time to worry too much about what you’re eating. If you want chips, eat chips – whilst other foods might be more optimal, anything at this point is better than nothing. So get yourself into Bakewell, find a pub or restaurant and get eating!

During the recovery period it is also worth continuing to drink water containing electrolytes to ensure that your body rebalances electrolyte levels and re-hydrates optimally. As before, drink to thirst – your body will let you know how much water you need.

That is it! All you need to optimise your nutrition during the Peak District’s most gruelling sportive. It is worth understanding that event day nutrition is not an exact science. There isn’t a recipe that suits everybody, this is just an independent guide based on personal experience of 10 years racing and riding. It takes many events, and to some degree, mistakes, to understand how best to fuel your body. It’s a personal journey but this is a good starting point.

Happy riding!

Oli Holmes – Dark & White Events

(previously owner of Endurance Fuel and former Elite MTB/Marathon racer)